History

The linguistic landscape of Central Italy at the beginning of Roman expansion

A number of historical phases of the language have been recognised, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, morphology, and syntax. There are no hard and fast rules of classification; different scholars emphasise different features. As a result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases,
Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the
Roman Catholic Church as well as by Protestant scholars from
Late Antiquity onward.

After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the
Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other formal uses.[citation needed]

Old Latin

The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, which was spoken from the
Roman Kingdom to the middle of the
Roman Republic period. It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of
Plautus and
Terence. The
Latin alphabet was devised from the
Etruscan alphabet. The writing later changed from what was initially either a right-to-left or a
boustrophedon[7][8] script to what ultimately became a strictly left-to-right script.[9]

Classical Latin

During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other
literate men, who wrote the great works of
classical literature, which were taught in
grammar and
rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such
schools, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech.[10][11]

Vulgar Latin

Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of
Plautus, which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, Vulgar Latin (termed sermo vulgi, "the speech of the masses", by
Cicero), existed concurrently with literate Classical Latin. The informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors and those found as graffiti.[12]

As it was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which eventually led to the differentiation of
Romance languages.[13] The
Decline of the Roman Empire meant a deterioration in educational standards that brought about Late Latin, a postclassical stage of the language seen in Christian writings of the time. It was more in line with everyday speech, not only because of a decline in education but also because of a desire to spread the word to the masses.[citation needed]

Despite dialectal variation, which is found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christian (Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the
Moorish conquest of Spain in 711 cut off communications between the major Romance regions that the languages began to diverge seriously.[14] The Vulgar Latin dialect that would later become
Romanian diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was largely cut off from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire.

One key marker of whether a given Romance feature was found in Vulgar Latin is to compare it with its parallel in Classical Latin. If it was not preferred in Classical Latin, then it most likely came from the undocumented contemporaneous Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance for "horse" (Italian cavallo, French cheval, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo and Romanian cal) came from Latin caballus. However, Classical Latin used equus. Therefore caballus was most likely the spoken form.[15]

Vulgar Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing.[citation needed]

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the postclassical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed. The spoken language had developed into the various incipient Romance languages; however, in the educated and official world Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the
Holy Roman Empire and its allies.

Without the institutions of the Roman empire that had supported its uniformity, medieval Latin lost its linguistic cohesion: for example, in classical Latin sum and eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use fui and fueram instead.[16] Furthermore, the meanings of many words have been changed and new vocabularies have been introduced from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail.[16]

Renaissance Latin

The
Renaissance briefly reinforced the position of Latin as a spoken language by its adoption by the
Renaissance Humanists. Often led by members of the clergy, they were shocked by the accelerated dismantling of the vestiges of the classical world and the rapid loss of its literature. They strove to preserve what they could and restore Latin to what it had been and introduced the practice of producing revised editions of the literary works that remained by comparing surviving manuscripts. By no later than the 15th century they had replaced Medieval Latin with versions supported by the scholars of the rising universities, who attempted, by scholarship, to discover what the classical language had been.[citation needed]

New Latin

During the Early Modern Age, Latin still was the most important language of culture in Europe. Therefore, until the end of the 17th century the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin. Afterwards, most diplomatic documents were written in
French and later just native or other languages.

In the
Anglican Church, after the publication of the Book of Common Prayer of 1559, a Latin edition was published in 1560 for use at universities such as
Oxford and the leading "public schools" (
English private academies), where the liturgy was still permitted to be conducted in Latin[19] and there have been several Latin translations since. Most recently, a Latin edition of the 1979 USA Anglican Book of Common Prayer has appeared.[20]

Switzerland adopts the country's Latin short name Helvetia on coins and stamps, since there is no room to use all of the nation's
four official languages. For a similar reason, it adopted the international vehicle and internet code CH, which stands for Confoederatio Helvetica, the country's full Latin name.

The polyglot
European Union has adopted Latin names in the logos of some of its institutions for the sake of linguistic compromise, an "ecumenical nationalism" common to most of the continent and as a sign of the continent's heritage (such as the
EU Council: Consilium)

Similarly
Canada's motto "A mari usque ad mare" (from sea to sea) and most provincial mottos are also in Latin (
British Columbia's is Splendor Sine Occasu (splendor without diminishment)).

Occasionally, some media outlets broadcast in Latin, which is targeted at enthusiasts. Notable examples include
Radio Bremen in
Germany,
YLE radio in
Finland, and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin.[21]

There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The
Latin Wikipedia has more than 100,000 articles written in Latin.